Brit-Am
DNA and
Anthropology Updates
Updates in DNA studies along with Anthropological Notes of general interest with a particular emphasis on points pertinent to the study of Ancient Israelite Ancestral Connections to Western Peoples as explained in Brit-Am studies.
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BAMAD no. 46
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update
24th February 2009, 18 Shevet 5769
Contents:
1. Do Older fathers Endanger their
offspring? Or Enhance them?
(a) Brit-Am Comment: Enhancement?
(b) Paternal Age Effect: How Old is Too Old?
2. Heroes are born not made, scientists claim
3. Y chromosomes and surnames in Britain
1. Do Older fathers Endanger their
offspring? Or Enhance them?
(a) Brit-Am Comment: Enhancement?
The article below brings varied sources saying that not only do older
mothers tend to have more children
born with problems but so do older fathers.
These facts are worth knowing.
On the other hand, I was told by Mordecai Lapid that there is another side to
the story.
Mordecai Lapid was a friend and neighbor of mine when I lived in Kiryat Arba
near Hebron.
Mordecai was murdered by Arabs in a drive-by shooting in 1993.
http://www.jdl.org/israel/hebron_facts.shtml
##On Dec. 6, 1993, Mordechai Lapid, 56, a pioneer of Kiryat Arba and a father of
13 children, stopped his minibus near his settlement and waited with his
19-year-old son, Shalom, who was taking a bus to Jerusalem. Palestinian Arab
gunmen attacked the minibus from a passing car, killing both father and son, and
wounding in the legs three other children: Yosi, 10; Bezalel, 11; and Haim,
17.##
Mordecai Lapid worked in transport but he had a major interest in scientific
matters especially genetics.
He conducted researches of his own.
Mordecai was born in Russia and his work was conducted in Russian or Hebrew.
According to Mordecai many men of great talent have been born from older men and
younger women.
He believed that there was something special about the age deference that gave
an advantage.
Unfortunately Arab bullets did not allow us to receive any more details.
In the Bible we have the case of Ruth and Boaz where Ruth was quite young and
Boaz according to tradition exceedingly old.
Fromt heir line emerged King David and the Future Messiah.
Jon Entine, "Abraham's Children. Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen
People", USA, 2007
also brings up the possibility that "Eugenic" considerations may be eliminating
some of our geniuses.
We have also spoken of this in the past.
(b) Paternal Age Effect: How Old is Too
Old?
http://how-old-is-too-old.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html
Extracts:
It is widely recognized that a 40-year-old woman has an increased risk of
bearing a child with Down syndrome. What is not known is that a 40-year-old man
has the same risk of fathering a child with schizophrenia, and even
higher odds of his offspring having autism. The risk of bipolar disorder appears
to rise as well.
In the past couple of decades, the number of older fathers has increased. Birth
rates for men older than 40 have jumped as much as 40 percent since 1980.
Researchers had analyzed medical records in Israel, where all young men and most
women must report to the draft board for mandatory medical, intelligence and
psychiatric screening. They found that children born to fathers 40 or older had
nearly a sixfold increase in the risk of autism as compared with kids whose
fathers were younger than 30. Children of fathers older than 50 (that includes
me) had a ninefold risk of autism.
The researchers said that advanced paternal age, as they call it, has also been
linked to an increased risk of birth defects, cleft lip and palate, water on the
brain, dwarfism, miscarriage and "decreased intellectual capacity."
The genetic code we are familiar with is expressed in the DNA itself. But there
is a second genetic code, separate from what is embedded in the DNA. To
distinguish it from the genetic code, it is referred to as "epigenetic"
information. It is like a bar code imprinted on the outside of a gene. The
information in that bar code can turn the gene on or off, sometimes
inappropriately. If it turns the wrong genes on or off, it can affect health and
disease just as surely as can changes in the DNA itself.
Malaspina has not yet proved it, but she suspects that as men grow older they
develop defects in the machinery that stamps this code on the genes. These
imprinting defects may give rise to the increased risk of schizophrenia, autism
and perhaps some of the other ailments related to paternal age.
Leading Researchers in the Field of the Male Biological Clock Agree
THE BEST AGE TO FATHER BABIES IS BETWEEN 25-30 FOR THE HEALTH AND HAPPINESS AND
FITNESS OF THE OFFSPRING.
This is a biological fact based on the hundreds of research studies and research
grants of the finest, most intelligent and compassionate scientists in many
related fields.
Another Brit-Am Comment on the above:
We have quoted extracts from this source
since the information is worth noting.
The URL article provides much more detail and explanation.
The author of the article who collated the sources is however (as he admits)
prejudiced on this matter due to he himself having fathered at mature age a
child with problems.
The traditional Jewish religious attitude is that as long as a person can have
children he should do so if this is possible.
2. Heroes are born not made, scientists
claim
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/
sciencenews/4636614/AAAS-Heroes-are-born-not-made-scientists-claim.html
Extracts:
Professor Deane Aikins, a psychiatrist at Yale University, said a small minority
of individuals remain cool even in the most stressful circumstances.
His findings, based on research with the military, found that some individuals
did not panic because their body naturally protected them.
Unlike the majority of people who were flooded with a stress hormone, they had
much lower levels and also showed signs of another hormone that actually calmed
them down.
He referred to Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot of the aeroplane that was
successfully landed on the Hudson River in New York last month, as an example.
"There are some individuals who when confronted with extreme stress their
hormone profile is rather unique," he said.
"Certain people are cooler under pressure and they perform very, very well
during these periods of time."
Professor Aikins, who outlined his findings at the American Association for the
Advancement of Science annual meeting, studied hormone stress levels during
extreme training exercises like mock survival or combat swimming.
He said that while there was no such thing as a "man without fear" certain
people were better equipped to deal with it.
He said that it was not that the "heroes" were not scared but they just did not
exhibit signs of panic.
He said US special forces as a group tend to "run cooler" than non-special
forces. He said it was too early to say what percentage of men were born heroes.
3. Y chromosomes and surnames in Britain
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2009/02/y-chromosomes-and-surnames-in-britain.html
Extracts:
Some haplogroups that are rare (less than 10%) or absent in the
controls exist at high frequencies within particular surnames: examples are
hgA1a in R., E1a in Bray, G in Wadsworth, J2 in Ketley, T in Feakes, Q* in
Mallinson, R1* in Northam, and R1a in Swindlehurst (Figure 2a). Attenborough
provides the clearest signal of coancestry, with 87% of chromosomes belonging to
hgE1b1b1, which is present at only 1% in controls.
Molecular Biology and Evolution doi:doi:10.1093/molbev/msp022
Founders, drift and infidelity: the relationship between Y chromosome
diversity and patrilineal surnames
Turi E. King and Mark A. Jobling
Abstract
Most heritable surnames, like Y chromosomes, are passed from father
to son. These unique cultural markers of coancestry might therefore have a
genetic correlate in shared Y chromosome types among men sharing
surnames, although the link could be affected by mutation, multiple
foundation for names, nonpaternity, and genetic drift. Here, we demonstrate
through an analysis of 1678 Y-chromosomal haplotypes within 40 British
surnames a remarkably high degree of coancestry that generally increases as
surnames become rarer. On average, the proportion of haplotypes lying
within descent clusters is 62%, but ranges from zero to 87%. The shallow
timedepth of many descent clusters within names, the lack of a detectable effect
of surname derivation on diversity, and simulations of surname descent suggest
that genetic drift through variation in reproductive success is important in
structuring haplotype diversity. Modern patterns therefore provide little
reliable information about the original founders of surnames some 700 years
ago. A comparative analysis of published data on Y diversity within Irish
surnames demonstrates a relative lack of surname frequency dependence of
coancestry, a difference probably mediated through distinct Irish and British
demographic histories including even more marked genetic drift in Ireland.
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